Dan drew his sword, eyes never leaving the elf as his left hand crackled with latent electricity. From the corner of his eye, he saw the candidates fighting the deformed soldiers. For the time being, they were holding their own, but Dan suspected that the soldier’s numbers would overwhelm the candidate’s inexperience if he couldn’t end things quickly.
“Pay attention, manling!” The elf certainly seemed to be enjoying himself as he swung his staff at Dan from a distance. A flurry of wood mana erupted from the elf, and the roots beneath Dan’s feet stirred and reached up for him.
Dan didn’t give them a chance, dashing forward and swinging at the elf with a diagonal upward stroke. At the last second, a thorn launched itself from the elf’s staff toward Dan. This time, the dart climbed out of the staff and launched itself at him, giving him time to activate Spatial Shield. The elf’s eyes grew wide as his point-blank shot curved around Dan’s twisting form.
The sword glowed purple for a second as it slammed into the elf’s spellshield, slowing for a second before it punctured the force field like a soap bubble. Then Dan staggered back, a step as a chilling wave of darkness burst from the elf. A second later, it dissipated, leaving Dan disorientated and shivering slightly with the elf about twenty paces away, eyeing him with much more wariness.
That had been close. Clearly, the elf expected Dan to pull back to defend himself against the thorn, and by abandoning his defense, he had been able to catch his opponent by surprise. Still, before he met Daeson, his skill level with Spatial Shield would have been too low to protect himself at that range. Even if it was slow, his years of training were beginning to pay off.
The stillness was broken when the elf’s earring shattered, letting out a puff of dark mana as it cracked. With a sigh, the elf reached up, detaching the ruptured crystal and throwing it into the bushes by the side of the road.
“Space, fire, and force?” His mouth full of sharp teeth shone in the darkness. “I suppose it is my honor to fight a mage with three affinities. I lost my charm for being careless, but it will make it all the much sweeter when I collect your head for my trophy case.”
“What makes you think that you’ll be enough, elf?” Dan replied, circling toward his opponent. “Now that you can’t ambush me, your one chance at victory is gone.”
“Now, now,” the elf chuckled. “Even if you are talented, for a human, you are still a human. To become a master of darkness, you must learn that there is always another chance to spring an ambush.”
With a flash of dark mana, his vision was robbed from him. More accurately, no light reached his eyes anymore as the outside of his spellshield became completely opaque. Swearing, Dan launched the Lightning Stroke he had already prepared at where he thought the elf was, only to be rewarded by the elf’s mocking laughter.
Daeson’s final lesson replayed itself through his mind bitterly. Banter with the elf just gave him a chance to recover his strength. This wasn’t a movie where macho posturing and one-liners served a purpose. When you have an overwhelming advantage, only a fool wouldn’t take it. He should have put a Lightning Stroke into the elf as soon as he regained sight of him. The asshole’s spellshield was probably still down from the sword blow, too.
“And thunder!” The elf mocked him, his voice seeming to come from everywhere. “I didn’t know that I was in the presence of such talent! It’s a shame that, for all of your potential, you’ve still fallen for my collection of tricks and ambushes all the same. Even if you’re an archmage, how can you strike what you can’t see?”
As if to punctuate his point, the elf’s staff slammed into the spellshield, rocking Dan backward. The forcefield rippled angrily, but a single blow didn’t come anywhere near breaking it. Still, the elf’s point stood. Even if he outclassed him, he couldn’t fight effectively while blind, especially as his area of effect spells would likely strike some of the candidates.
A slight smile quirked across his face. Like the elf, most of his early spells were devoted to distracting, stunning, or temporarily paralyzing an opponent long enough for him to strike a killing blow. How many of the battles he fought on Twilight came down to him surprising or stunning some creature unfathomably more powerful than him and then crippling it while it was insensible.
“We need help now!” Sam’s frantic voice interrupted his musing. “The elf just shot Vernon with something, and he’s on the ground foaming. His System is spitting out constant warnings about foreign contaminants and-”
“Yes, mage, they do need your help,” the elf laughed triumphantly. “I will kill your charges one-by-one. Their mana will be but an appetizer before I dine on you, but more than anything, I want you to despair. To know that even if you might have been the more powerful mage, we will never know. Instead, you are powerless to help your allies until I finally come for you.”
Dan frantically glanced back and forth inside the darkened cocoon of his spellshield. He tried turning off his spellshield, hoping that, without it supporting the elf’s spell, the darkness would collapse. No luck. The absolute night around him remained unchanged.
“Dan,” Sam was panicking now, “Jennifer’s fighting with him to try and hold him off, but it’s not enough. He’s already killed Ashley and Greg. I just don’t-” She didn’t finish the sentence, instead taking a deep sobbing breath.
“I can’t see, Sam.” Helplessness filled his voice. “He’s preventing any light from approaching me. All I can do is start firing area spells and hope that it’s enough to bring him down. I would have to kill you all.”
“Wait, I” Sam began to reply.
<Sam the Great> is attempting to initiate a video feed upload. Do you accept? Y/N
“Accept!” Dan yelled, too impatient to try and accept the prompt without vocalization.
In the right corner of his screen, a black and white video of the fight from Sam’s perspective appeared. Most of the deformed soldiers were on the ground sporting a variety of different injuries, but more than half of the candidates had joined them. The perspective changed as Sam looked back toward where Dan was. He saw himself through her eyes, an egg of inky darkness pacing nervously back and forth by the side of the path. Then her vision moved to where Jennifer fought the elf.
Jennifer was fast, and her runescripting almost let her keep up with the elf, but she didn’t have the wealth of resources available to her that Dan did when his tattoo was inscribed. Despite the artistry of her movements, the way she didn’t waste a single motion while engaging the elf, it was clear that he was winning. She had a slight hitch in her gait when she used her left leg, and her lip was split. Even as Dan approached Sam to take advantage of her vision, the elf’s staff lashed out once again and connected with the meat of her thigh. Jennifer winced and slowed further.
He took a moment when he reached Sam to orient himself behind her so he could use her vision to aim. A deep breath later, he shouted.
“Jen! Down, now!” The elf cocked his head for the barest of moments before the fireball detonated directly above them, the force bubble hovering over Jennifer’s head as she threw herself to the ground, the only thing saving her from immolation.
The elf’s spellshield held. It also held against the Lightning Stroke that hit it a moment later. It didn’t hold when his sword bit into it, flaring purple both in Dan’s vision and a bright white in the black and white camera feed from Sam. As soon as it fell, Dan stepped forward, pulling the struggling elf into the darkness with him.
For a second, both individuals grappled in the absolute darkness of the elf’s spell. Then the cobalt light of Shocking Fist lit up their tiny world. The elf convulsed. Dan straddled his bucking body and punched down into his face with all of his strength, triggering another Shocking Fist. The elf’s eyes rolled back up into his head as Dan reached into his belt and planted a hunting knife into his opponent’s eye.
The darkness disappeared and was replaced by waves of pink engulfed him. Dan smiled loosely and took in the clearing. Sam was still scared and shouting something, but he really couldn’t make it out through the waves of pleasure running through his body. Next to him, Jennifer’s eyes were glazed, and she shuddered rapturously. His gaze fixed on the delicate curves of her throat.
That mana was his. All of its pink, wonderful glory belonged to him, and she was stealing it. It would take a couple pounds of pressure from his knife, and he could have it all back. One moment of screams, then a wet warmth, and then euphoria.
Dan shook his head. Fuck. He had thought he was past this by now. Mentally, he began building walls of willpower, separating his conscious mind from the pleasure. It was still there, but it was distant. Beckoning.
He shuddered and looked back to Sam. Her eyes were slightly glazed, too, but she wasn’t looking at Dan anymore. Instead, her gaze was trained on the wall of misshapen soldiers, covered with fungal growths, walking toward them. There were at least two hundred, but more worryingly, Dan could make out at least three elves walking behind the mass of men. They weren’t coming just from the breakthrough near the Fifth Regiment’s camp. Instead, some came from down the path where the airstrip lay, and others approached from the South, where there should have been nothing.
Dan counted it a small blessing that none of them approached with a sense of urgency. Instead, the battle seemed like a game to the three elves as they joked and made wagers in their own language. One even mocked the weakness of the elf that had fallen to Dan’s knife. Their purpose was clear and inexorable. They were here to herd his team. If he attacked any one of the three groups, the other two would be able to attack him from behind and overwhelm him.
The only path that remained was North. Into the jungle.
